Subject: Re: Process of Installation?
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 04:06:11 -0800

George Hester wrote:

> When I run the setup for Cygwin I go through various dialog boxes to download and install various packages.  All the packages come in as name.tar.bz2 files.  Consider this package:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=28862
> 
> The files here are in the form name.tar.gz.  What I did was ungzip the package and recompress it as a bz2 file.  What I'd like to do is use the same sequence of events that Cygwin uses to install the name.tar.bz2 files downloaded from Cygwin setup to install my newly formed bz2 file as I just described.  But I don't know the process (the sequence of events) that Cygwin uses on the bz2 files to install the modules.
> 
> So I am asking what that sequence of events are and if it is possible to "manually" install a package such as the above using the same sequence of events as are used through the Setup interface?  Thanks.

.bz2 and .gz are simply compression types.  They specify nothing about
the content or format contained therein.

Cygwin's setup.exe is designed to install Cygwin packages.  These are
not arbitrary .bz2 files but rather special archives created by the
maintainers in a way that makes them installable by setup.  You cannot
simply point setup at arbitrary tarballs[*] and expect it to work.  If
you want to install the items to which you refer, you will need to
download, unpack, configure, make, and install them yourself, fixing any
issues that come up along the way.  Setup can only work with Cygwin
packages.

[*] Unless of course those files are Cygwin packages, with corresponding
setup.ini files.

Brian

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